NBCU News Group Digital April In Review: Ranks As #1 News Organization, Adds New Streaming Hours, Receives 15 Awards & Honors

NBCU News Group’s digital properties reached more than 145 million unique visitors

Morgan Radford and Aaron Gilchrist joined NBC News NOW as anchors

NBCU News Group Digital received six Deadline Club Award and four Webby Award nominations

May 17, 2021 – NBCU News Group (NBC News, TODAY, MSNBC and CNBC) brought in more than 145 million unique visitors and more than 800 million video starts in April. NBCU News Group ranked as the #1 news organization, beating CNN, ABC News, CBS News, Fox News, New York Times and Washington Post. 

In addition, TODAY has reached more than 50M unique visitors for the last six months and continues to be the only standalone brand to rank among the top 10 Lifestyle entities. 

CNBC ranks as the #1 non-portal business news property for both unique visitors and video views (March, 2021), and MSNBC ranks in the top #5 in unique visitors and continues to rank as the #1 political news brand for video views and time spent (March, 2021).

CNBC Make It launched two new video series, including Top of the Game and Next Gen Investing and also launched on Snapchat, following their launch on TikTok in March. The Make It franchise saw more than 36M unique visitors in April. The last five months were the highest traffic months for CNBC Make It. 

CNBC PRO continues to smash subscriber records, hitting a new high every month in 2021, while also seeing record engagement from its users. 

NBCU News Group’s streaming services, NBC News NOW and TODAY All Day, had top months, with NBC News NOW seeing more than 55 million video views and 16 million hours watched, up nearly +300% year-to-date in 2021 over 2020. It was the streaming platform’s best April ever, with viewers watching for an average of 40 minutes at a time on OTT platforms. The NBC News NOW special, The Racism Virus, has seen half a million views. The streaming platform also launched NBC News NOW Live with Aaron Gilchrist and Morgan Radford.

TODAY All Day, which saw their 2nd best month on record, hosted special programming dedicated to the anniversary of the Royal Wedding which drove the best day of the month and one of the top days of the year. TODAY All Day will be producing additional special programming this month, dedicated to AAPI Heritage Month, mental health awareness and personal finance tips.   

April was one of News Group’s top three largest listener months on record, ranking in the top 10 of all podcast publishers, with more than 50 million downloads across all podcasts and showcasts, up more than +46% versus April 2020. 

In April, NBCU News Group launched Killer Role, a new podcast from Dateline NBC and, with the recent launch of TechCheck, CNBC announced it would also make the tech-driven news program available as an audio podcast in April. Both NBC News and CNBC had record months for podcast downloads.

NBCU News Group Digital was honored with 15 new awards and honors in the month of April, with significant recognition including six Deadline Club Award nominations and four Webby Award nominations. 

PlanYourVaccine.com has reached 4.5 million unique visitors since its launch just three months ago and more than 7 million page views. The site now boasts more than 32,000 verified vaccination sites and gives users the opportunity to sign up for when new information about the vaccines becomes available in their state.

*Sources: Comscore Media Metrix (April 2021) & Comscore Video Metrix (March 2021), U.S. desktop internet population 2+ and mobile internet population 13+ years old, Custom-Defined List, Based on NBCU News entity compared to a custom list of brand competitors that are also in the News/Information Category. Adobe Analytics & Partner Dashboards, Cross-Platform Global Data, April 2021. Podtrac, Total Mobile and Desktop US Podcast Data, April 2021.  

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For more information, contact: 

Emily Passer
NBC News Digital
Emily.Passer@nbcuni.com